I had missed the book lying quietly and innocently there on a shelf in a glass case at the auction house. It was overshadowed by two noisy shelves above it with Shirley Temple photos, Shirley…
Category: Civil War
Extolling the work of early black craftspeople
Posted in Black history, Books, Civil War, and Crafts
The thin booklet was laying on the auction table haphazardly, as if someone had absentmindedly tossed it there. Because it was so small and flat, I’m sure it was considered to be of little worth. That’s…
Tending her grandparents’ gravesite
Posted in Black history, and Civil War
We had driven past the headstone when my friend Valorie called out for me to back up the car. She was in the back seat quietly looking out the window for the granite stone that marked the…
Over the weekend, I went with a friend to see Robert Redford’s new movie “The Conspirator,” about Mary Surratt, who was tried and convicted of conspiring to kill President Lincoln in 1865. I know the…
A slave freed to join the Union army
Posted in Black history, Civil War, and Military
Bill Fox slid the slightly faded and folded document carefully from the clean white envelope with my name on the front. He was just as excited as me about what we had before us. It was…